Disruptive Technologies: Women Speakers Series

Under the theme, Lead beyond: Accelerating innovative women who change the world, we are glad to announce Women speaker series – WSS that will be held every last Saturday of the month at RIT Dubai – Rochester Institute of Technology from 4-6:30 pm.

The speaker series will provide opportunity to create communities that fuel innovation, facilitate knowledge sharing and provide support through highly interactive sessions designed to foster discussion and collaboration.

WSS focuses on providing leading-edge professional development for mid- and senior-level women. Through this event, we want to encourage and empower women to embrace and stay in STEM field.

The topics of disruptive technologies were presented in the first series , i.e. Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Data Science and Cyber security and took place in 29th September 2018.

In this session, Ms. Ghada has presented different areas of AI, i.e. what is AI? and it has been defined as an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. She also presented how machines can be learning, also the different uses of AI in government and private sectors.

Block chain

Second session of the Women Speakers Series # 1 – Disruptive Technology: Block chain session with Dr Manar Abu Talib – Assistant Dean of College of Sciences at the University of Sharjah in the UAE.

In this session, Dr. Manar has presented the improved block chain infrastructure with Internet of Things. She has started as well by defining the block chain: originally block chain, is a growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. By design, a blockchain is resistant to modification of the data.

She has explained how it is working, its history, also Dubai’s block chain strategy and how it is been used in government all around the world as well as in United Arab Emirates. The team of different roles and responsibilities was introduced. At the end, she has showed how women contributed in the field of block chain specifically and in STEM generally.

Data Science

In this session, Dr. Guilia has presented Data science and the new revolution of data. She has defined data science as the practice of various well established scientific fields (Statistics, Computer Science, Maths), their algorithms and methods, through the use of programming languages and software frameworks, that aims to extract knowledge, insights and recommendations from data, and deliver them to users for better decision making.

After that, she has presented the growth of data in science and different applications of data have been presented like in manufacturing, retail, digital business, transportation, financial services, environment, healthcare, environment and energy.

Cyber security

Fourth session of the Women Speakers Series # 1 – Disruptive Technology: Cyber security session by Dr. Hoda Alkhazaimi – Research Assistant Professor at New York University Abu Dhabi and the Director of Center of Cyber Security in New York University Abu Dhabi.

Dr. Hoda has defined the Cybersecurity as the protection of internet-connected systems, including hardware, software and data, from cyberattacks. In a computing context, security comprises cybersecurity and physical security that both are used by enterprises to protect against unauthorized access to data centers and other computerized systems.

At the end of the sessions, Dr. Boutheina has started the Q&A part for the audience and the participation was great.